We are at present in Alcamo, a quiet and clean little town, whose well-conducted inn is highly to be commended as an excellent establishment, especially as it is most conveniently situated for visitors to the temple of Segeste, which lies out of the direct road in a very lonely situation.
Alcamo, Thursday, April 19, 1787.
Our agreeable dwelling in this quiet town, among the mountains, has so charmed us that we have determined to pass a whole day here. We may then, before anything else, speak of our adventures yesterday. In one of my earlier letters, I questioned the originality of Prince Pallagonia's bad taste. He has had forerunners and can adduce many a precedent. On the road towards Mon Reale stand two monstrosities, beside a fountain with some vases on a balustrade, so utterly repugnant to good taste that one would suppose they must have been placed there by the Prince himself.
After passing Mon Reale, we left behind us the beautiful road, and got into the rugged mountain country. Here some rocks appeared on the crown of the road, which, judging from their gravity and metallic incrustations, I took to be ironstone. Every level spot is cultivated, and is more or less prolific. The limestone in these parts had a reddish hue, and all the pulverized earth is of the same colour. This red argillaceous and calcareous earth extends over a great space; the subsoil is hard; no sand underneath; but it produces excellent wheat. We noticed old very strong, but stumpy, olive trees.
Under the shelter of an airy room, which has been built as an addition to the wretched inn, we refreshed ourselves with a temperate luncheon. Dogs eagerly gobbled up the skins of the sausages we threw away, but a beggar-boy drove them off. He was feasting with a wonderful appetite on the parings of the apples we were devouring, when he in his turn was driven away by an old beggar. Want of work is here felt everywhere. In a ragged toga the old beggar was glad to get a job as house-servant, or waiter. Thus I had formerly observed that whenever a landlord was asked for anything which he had not at the moment in the house, he would send a beggar to the shop for it.
However, we are pretty well provided against all such sorry attendance; for our Vetturino is an excellent fellow—he is ready as ostler, cicerone, guard, courier, cook, and everything.
On the higher hills you find every where the olive, the caruba, and the ash. Their system of farming is also spread over three years. Beans, corn, fallow; in which mode of culture the people say the dung does more marvels than all the Saints. The grape stock is kept down very low.
Alcamo is gloriously situated on a height, at a tolerable distance from a bay of the sea. The magnificence of the country quite enchanted us. Lofty rocks, with deep valleys at their feet, but withal wide open spaces, and great variety. Beyond Mon Beale you look upon a beautiful double valley, in the centre of which a hilly ridge again raises itself. The fruitful fields lie green and quiet, but on the broad roadway the wild bushes and shrubs are brilliant with flowers—the broom one mass of yellow, covered with its pupilionaceous blossoms, and not a single green leaf to be seen; the white-thorn cluster on cluster; the aloes are rising high and promising to flower; a rich tapestry of an amaranthine-red clover, of orchids and the little Alpine roses, hyacinths, with unopened bells, asphodels, and other wild flowers.
Sicily—Segeste.